The long and the short of it

Short:

Carrie is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and journalist who lives in Berlin.

Medium:

Carrie Hampel was born and mostly raised in Australia, otherwise in the UK and the USA. She left acting school to create interdisciplinary performance pieces, moving to Berlin in 1994. She created and produced her own projects, as well as acting on Germany’s most popular weekly television series 2002-2004, and producing content for other artists, for example, in the 2019 Venice Biennale and Hamburger Bahnhof, Germany’s national contemporary art gallery 2023-24. Her own projects include a near future scenario with two decades of research focussed on the end of the oil in Western suburbs, which has formed the basis of her novel, Universal Drive. Since 2015, while working on her novel, she has been utlising her research, working as a journalist specialising in sustainable transport and renewable energy.

Long:

Carrie Hampel has been writing and producing her own performances and interdisciplinary projects since the 1990s. Born in Australia, she was raised in a patchwork family of teachers and university lecturers in Australia, England, and the USA. Carrie left the Victorian College of the Arts acting school to create more diverse female roles in her own interdisciplinary performance pieces.

Carrie migrated to Berlin in 1994 to experience Germany's economic transition after reunification of East and West Berlin and to be immersed in city’s flourishing arts scenes. She made use of the multitude of temporary building spaces for arts projects, clubs and exhibitions. Her work was influenced by her observations of East Germany being absorbed into the West, as well as the reunified city's playful confluence of artistic disciplines and the immersive art and clubbing environment of 90s Berlin.

Carrie's first solo performance The Amazon Woman in Berlin and all subsequent projects and performance productions were performed in German, including her Gesamtkunstwerk Freelancer in 2001. She performed in readings with her songs and texts in German-speaking fora, including being a regular guest with Reformbuehne Heim und Welt and Die Surfpoeten, among others. With her role in the weekly TV series Hinter Gittern between 2002-2004, Carrie became one of the few non-native speakers to act on national German television (also randomly broadcast internationally). Carrie translates and writes her own scripts in both German and English.

After a short stint in New Zealand with her partner to make his feature film, Carrie returned to Berlin. While she raised her two kids alone, she worked as a translator and bicycle guide, and researched near-future scenarios about the end of the oil age for her first novel, working title: Universal Drive (now being polished and submitted to agents).

By 2015, this research precipitated into work as a journalist on sustainable transport, and as a writer and researcher for other artists. Carrie participated in Laura Favoretti’s Clandestine Talks installation at the 2019 Venice Beinnale, where she talked about global bullying for oil resources, as well as producing research, text and audio material for four of Emeka Ogboh’s projects, including his work Radio 030 in 2023, about people seeking refuge in Berlin for the permanent collection at Germany’s national contemporary art gallery, Hamburger Bahnhof.

Carrie’s articles are published online in 7 languages besides English, her journalism is sourced in over 40 academic papers and several Wikipedia pages. Articles about her work as an actor and/or artist can also be found online and in print in multiple languages.